Many years ago, as those of you who used to read my old blog might recall, I visited Chernobyl.
Alas, that's not quite as unique a claim as I wish it was. Shortly after I went there for a weekend, with my dad and a friend, games firms started sending all manner of journos for a visit; freebie trips to support various Chernobyl-set video games.
Ukrainian companies have been running tours for years, and - though the number of people allowed into the exclusion zone at any one time is limited - it's not exactly difficult to get in, should playing hopscotch with patches of contaminated moss be the sort of thing you think you might enjoy.
Pripyat - the abandoned city just a stone's throw from the iconic red-and-white chimney of the Chernobyl reactor - is every bit as eerie as you might expect; a decades-old Soviet time capsule, its skyscrapers and streets crumbling as nature reasserts itself.
And yet Kiev - Ukraine's capital, and most adventure tourists' point of entry for a few days of radioactive whimsy - is similarly strange. Like the rest of its country, the place felt like a setting for a video game; the grey, concrete slabs of housing, the splintered streets, the wild dogs and head crabs everywhere... More than once I thought it could've been a theme park dedicated to Half-Life 2's City 17, a place teetering on the precipice of turmoil.
Inevitably, Chernobyl has been the setting for more than one video game - most notably Modern Warfare - but also one of my favourite games of all time; the strange and atmospheric S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
So here's the good news: at its best, Homefront: The Revolution, with its crumbling buildings and piles of debris, reminded me of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. At its worst, it reminded me of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. running on an old 486 PC with 32mb of RAM.
Alas, that's not quite as unique a claim as I wish it was. Shortly after I went there for a weekend, with my dad and a friend, games firms started sending all manner of journos for a visit; freebie trips to support various Chernobyl-set video games.
Ukrainian companies have been running tours for years, and - though the number of people allowed into the exclusion zone at any one time is limited - it's not exactly difficult to get in, should playing hopscotch with patches of contaminated moss be the sort of thing you think you might enjoy.
Pripyat - the abandoned city just a stone's throw from the iconic red-and-white chimney of the Chernobyl reactor - is every bit as eerie as you might expect; a decades-old Soviet time capsule, its skyscrapers and streets crumbling as nature reasserts itself.
And yet Kiev - Ukraine's capital, and most adventure tourists' point of entry for a few days of radioactive whimsy - is similarly strange. Like the rest of its country, the place felt like a setting for a video game; the grey, concrete slabs of housing, the splintered streets, the wild dogs and head crabs everywhere... More than once I thought it could've been a theme park dedicated to Half-Life 2's City 17, a place teetering on the precipice of turmoil.
Inevitably, Chernobyl has been the setting for more than one video game - most notably Modern Warfare - but also one of my favourite games of all time; the strange and atmospheric S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
So here's the good news: at its best, Homefront: The Revolution, with its crumbling buildings and piles of debris, reminded me of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. At its worst, it reminded me of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. running on an old 486 PC with 32mb of RAM.
SO YOU SAY YOU WANT THE REVOLUTION
The Revolution continues where the unloved Homefront left off: slipping you into the breeches of a faceless, personality-devoid, revolutionary, fighting back against high-tech North Korean invaders, on US soil.
If you can get past the lazy xenophobia - playing right into the hands of those who want us to believe in mysterious foreign boogeymen - you'll discover that Homefront does exactly what you'd expect from a first-person shooter with such a backstory.
It borrows the Ubisoft model, by presenting you with a vast open world - in this instance post-invasion Philadelphia - tasking you with joining the resistance to take back the city one North Korean outpost at a time. So far so jingoistic and predictable, but there are elements at work in The Revolution which ensure this isn't a game so easily dismissed.
There's a neat weapons system, that allows you to customise your weaponry in the field. A crossbow, for instance, can be transformed into a flamethrower or a blunderbuss (of all things).
Also, the city is divided into various zones: red zones will be crawling with North Korean patrols, whereas yellow zones are where what's left of the civilian population lives (and thus your actions will require you to blend in, and engage in more subtle tactics of sabotage).
The Revolution continues where the unloved Homefront left off: slipping you into the breeches of a faceless, personality-devoid, revolutionary, fighting back against high-tech North Korean invaders, on US soil.
If you can get past the lazy xenophobia - playing right into the hands of those who want us to believe in mysterious foreign boogeymen - you'll discover that Homefront does exactly what you'd expect from a first-person shooter with such a backstory.
It borrows the Ubisoft model, by presenting you with a vast open world - in this instance post-invasion Philadelphia - tasking you with joining the resistance to take back the city one North Korean outpost at a time. So far so jingoistic and predictable, but there are elements at work in The Revolution which ensure this isn't a game so easily dismissed.
There's a neat weapons system, that allows you to customise your weaponry in the field. A crossbow, for instance, can be transformed into a flamethrower or a blunderbuss (of all things).
Also, the city is divided into various zones: red zones will be crawling with North Korean patrols, whereas yellow zones are where what's left of the civilian population lives (and thus your actions will require you to blend in, and engage in more subtle tactics of sabotage).
PRINCE AND THE REVOLUTION
When it works - yes, when it works - I was surprised how much I enjoyed The Revolution.
The city is incredibly evocative, dripping with the sort of post-apocalyptic ruin that I can never get enough of.
There's a heavy atmosphere hanging over everything, with troops and drones patrolling the city, and airships scanning the ground with neon beams, torn straight from a 1980s sci-fi movie. At points, it felt like the future war Terminator game we've never had. Helped by some cunning AI, limited med packs, and the warren-like terrain, skirmishes are genuinely tense and unpredictable.
But that's where the positives end. So much about The Revolution feels unfinished, and a lot of the gameplay is undercooked, or half developed. Yes, you can stealth it up... but you can't hide bodies or stick to cover. Yes, you can ride a motorbike, but the landscape is so full of rubble that you can never quite let rip with the throttle.
Yes, lots of customisable weapons and great enemy AI, but the aiming feels off, and sometimes it's hard to know when you've been shot.
Ok, huge environment. Unfortunately, most of the missions are basically variations on one basic idea.
Yes, it is, potentially, a compelling setting for a game, but the story is a virtually non-existent, vacuous hole of a narrative, without a single original or profound thing to say. Which wouldn't be a problem if you weren't forced to sit through dull cutscenes full of dull characters having conversations about things you don't really care about.
All of this pales, however, when it comes to the framerate - which lets down what would've otherwise been some great graphics. Apparently it's bad on PC and terrible on Xbox One - but I can confirm that it's almost catastrophic on PS4.
When it works - yes, when it works - I was surprised how much I enjoyed The Revolution.
The city is incredibly evocative, dripping with the sort of post-apocalyptic ruin that I can never get enough of.
There's a heavy atmosphere hanging over everything, with troops and drones patrolling the city, and airships scanning the ground with neon beams, torn straight from a 1980s sci-fi movie. At points, it felt like the future war Terminator game we've never had. Helped by some cunning AI, limited med packs, and the warren-like terrain, skirmishes are genuinely tense and unpredictable.
But that's where the positives end. So much about The Revolution feels unfinished, and a lot of the gameplay is undercooked, or half developed. Yes, you can stealth it up... but you can't hide bodies or stick to cover. Yes, you can ride a motorbike, but the landscape is so full of rubble that you can never quite let rip with the throttle.
Yes, lots of customisable weapons and great enemy AI, but the aiming feels off, and sometimes it's hard to know when you've been shot.
Ok, huge environment. Unfortunately, most of the missions are basically variations on one basic idea.
Yes, it is, potentially, a compelling setting for a game, but the story is a virtually non-existent, vacuous hole of a narrative, without a single original or profound thing to say. Which wouldn't be a problem if you weren't forced to sit through dull cutscenes full of dull characters having conversations about things you don't really care about.
All of this pales, however, when it comes to the framerate - which lets down what would've otherwise been some great graphics. Apparently it's bad on PC and terrible on Xbox One - but I can confirm that it's almost catastrophic on PS4.
THE REVOLUTION SHOULD NOT BE TELEVISED
The developers have admitted that The Revolution's framerate is an issue, and are apparently working to release a patch that'll fix it... but as it stands this is a game that has been released with a major technical issue.
Sometimes it's fine, but for vast swathes you'll be sluggishly moving through the world at 20fps or less.
The knock-on effect it has on the action can - at times - render the game unplayable. I cannot stress how big a problem it is. Plus there are the moments when everything freezes for a few seconds, while the autosave kicks in, adding insult to injury.
I read about other games with launch issues, and can often overlook them. I mean, I saw the bugs in Assassin's Creed Unity, but never encountered anything which killed them game for me. This is different.
Fundamentally, it shouldn't have been released until those framerate issues were fixed. You can almost excuse a developer not noticing a bug, but there's no way the framerate wasn't spotted prior to release. It's there in every moment, getting in the way. If your graphics engine is too demanding... then find a workaround. Gameplay should, ultimately, be the most important element of any game.
Had it not been for the above it might've been possible to overlook some of the other problems the game has, the general sense of it being rushed, or unpolished. Unfortunately, it just brings all of that into sharper relief.
And that's a shame - because there's some fine work here, and the makings of something quite decent, underneath all the stink.
SUMMARY: Would you get into a car which didn't drive properly?
SCORE: -2 out of 100,000,014
The developers have admitted that The Revolution's framerate is an issue, and are apparently working to release a patch that'll fix it... but as it stands this is a game that has been released with a major technical issue.
Sometimes it's fine, but for vast swathes you'll be sluggishly moving through the world at 20fps or less.
The knock-on effect it has on the action can - at times - render the game unplayable. I cannot stress how big a problem it is. Plus there are the moments when everything freezes for a few seconds, while the autosave kicks in, adding insult to injury.
I read about other games with launch issues, and can often overlook them. I mean, I saw the bugs in Assassin's Creed Unity, but never encountered anything which killed them game for me. This is different.
Fundamentally, it shouldn't have been released until those framerate issues were fixed. You can almost excuse a developer not noticing a bug, but there's no way the framerate wasn't spotted prior to release. It's there in every moment, getting in the way. If your graphics engine is too demanding... then find a workaround. Gameplay should, ultimately, be the most important element of any game.
Had it not been for the above it might've been possible to overlook some of the other problems the game has, the general sense of it being rushed, or unpolished. Unfortunately, it just brings all of that into sharper relief.
And that's a shame - because there's some fine work here, and the makings of something quite decent, underneath all the stink.
SUMMARY: Would you get into a car which didn't drive properly?
SCORE: -2 out of 100,000,014
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